My hearing experience (1)

In this whole blog, I speak about MY OWN EXPERIENCE, and you can feel differently, so the best advise that can be given to someone interested in buying the Sennheiser HD800 headphones, is to try and hear it for yourself BEFORE buying. Those headphones are really special and it may or may not suit your tastes.
I find them perfect with some instrumental music, with real instruments (but I'm not saying they're not great with other types of music such as electronic or commercial music). But remember that to sound amazing, they need music perfectly recorded, or you will hear every single defect... That's the trade-off of those cans... They present the music clearly as it is recorded, and don't add nor substract any information.
It's amazing with holographic image of the instruments and vocals when the recording is great, but not so good with not so well recorded cds.
First, what is the most striking, is the huge width of the soundstage.
On some cds, we can truly have a sense of deepness of the stage which translates in a perfect localization of each instrument and vocal. But most important for me is that the hd800 present the music as we were in front of a stage. Sometimes we can have the impression that the music is a little distant, but it always seems more realistic to me than hearing the music "inside my head" as it was the case with my other headphone, the Sennheiser hd580, which I still find very good. (but not in the same league as the HD800).

I will later comment my experience with some cds of my own collection.

Differences with the other headphones

Well, in fact I can only compare with another headphone from Sennheiser which I own, it's the HD580.  The HD580 was considered by many as one of the most neutral headphones. One similar headphone, the HD600 is still considered as one of the most neutral.
First thing I must say, is that I have no headphone amplificator, and I use my headphones directly from the headphones out jack on my CD players (Sony cdp-xa2ES, and marantz CD6004, more on those in another future post).
Unlike many would tell you, I can say that those 2 CD players can drive the HD800 well. (but I know that it's qualities can be improved if using a headphone amp).
After more than 100h of listening (so I thing that my Sennheiser HD800 is now burned-in), my conclusion is the same as the first time I plugged them: these are impressive and exceptional headphones.
What stroke me most is the instruments separation, the clarity of all the details, and the huge sound stage (large and deep). It's difficult for me to explain precisely, but IMO, the HD800 present the recording as if we were facing a stage. On good recordings, we can even locate the instruments in space. I find this absolutely amazing!!! Even directly plugged on my marantz cd6004 phone out!!

Now that I have heard my favourite music with the sennheiser HD800, there is no chance that I go back to any "lesser" headphone.

Sennheiser HD800 - Presentation with pictures

Here are some pictures I took of the HD800 with its case.

I will soon add more pictures and comments about this great headphone...